Eye witness account: Caught up in Turkey’s coup

TravelMole reader Gordon Oakley, managing director of Airline supply company Malton In-Flight, was due to be flying from Istanbul to Shanghai. Here is his firsthand report of what happened.

"I’m not an expert but, as military coups go, it was a pretty brief and, it would seem, an ill-conceived one.

The first I knew of anything unusual going on was late Friday evening, when shortly after leaving a garden barbecue party at a friend’s house in a northern suburb of Istanbul, I was heading for the airport in a taxi, a journey of about 45 minutes.

It was hot and I was feeling pretty weary, after a relaxed evening with friends, drinking Raki and eating kebabs and homemade mezze.

So, with the taxi driver’s traditional Turkish music barely drowning the sound of the cab’s terminally-ill exhaust system, I had dozed off, only to be woken by an impatient crawl of traffic on the motorway as we approached the airport.

The taxi driver was muttering something to himself in Turkish, which I couldn’t understand, but he seemed to be getting more and more agitated.

It was clear he needed me to make a decision about something, but I had no idea what.

So I called my Turkish friend, who I had expected to be still partying, and I was suddenly surprised to hear a change in his tone, from the previously proud and relaxed, Istanbul-ite.

He sounded angry and embarrassed and even a bit panicky. This wasn’t making any sense to me but he said I had to make a quick decision about whether to immediately go back to his place, or go to a hotel at the airport.

The army had just closed the airport and ‘Armageddon’ was about to kick off.

He was sounding very annoyed and was blaming the Turkish president, for stealing money, the corruption of his government and the army for attempting something ridiculous to seize power.

He told me news reports were saying that there were tanks blocking the roads to the airport. Sure enough, as we approached the airport slip road, a very large military tank was blocking it.

As a stroke of luck, there was a hotel very nearby, appropriately-called the Wow, and it had a room available for me.

What then followed that night was a bit unusual, even in all my years of travelling. There was the sound of sporadic gunfire and, although I couldn’t tell exactly where it was coming from, it sounded very close.

There was a helicopter hovering overhead and then the sound of two F16 fighter jets making repeated runs, flying very low over the city.

The noise was deafening. The windows vibrated. Then there came one very loud thunderous crash and the whole room shook.

It sounded like an explosion. Reports I saw later on the TV seemed to suggest this was probably the moment an army helicopter I had previously been hearing, was shot down.

By about 4am things seemed to be calming down and I managed to get a couple of hours’ sleep.

The Turkish Airlines’ website had no updates on the situation. The only thing I heard was the airport would be opening at around 6am and sure enough I saw the first aircraft take off a few minutes after six.

I tried several times to get through on the phone to the airline but eventually gave up listening to the annoying and useless message, telling me that my call would be answered shortly.

Things were quiet and calm in the hotel lobby, almost as if nothing had happened during the night, so it seemed a good idea to head over to the airport to see if I could be one of the first to change my ticket.

This idea was a mistake. The airport was like the scene of a rock concert the morning after.  People were outside the terminal, sleeping on the grass, and there were signs of some kind of a riot left on the road.

People were milling about everywhere and there was no sign of any staff-organisation, or control.

Inside the terminal there was one person from the airport ground services company trying to give information to people, but all he could say was that they were planning what to do and would be giving information in about two hours.

This subsequently turned out to be about five hours. By then, the airport was becoming severely congested with more and more people arriving to take their flights.

Yet still no information. Nobody seemed to know what was going on.

The worst moment of the whole saga, for me at least, was about to come when I noticed a large crowd gathering around the Turkish Airlines ticket counter, at around midday.

It seemed they were starting to change the tickets for those of us whose flight had been cancelled during the previous night.

There was complete chaos, no obvious queue, nor anyone to manage or organise it in an orderly manner.

There were lots of people shouting at each other and several small conflicts broke out as people were pushed forwards and it became a crushed, impatient and angry scene as people accused each other of jumping the line.

The ground staff were grossly under-manned and had no evident skills to be able to control the manic and gradually expanding crowd, as more and more people arrived at the airport.

I eventually managed to get to a window after what must have been about three hours. By then the poor woman behind the counter seemed to be at her mental limit of dealing with a very impatient and ugly crowd (present company excepted, of course).

The good news, at least, was I now had my new flight ticket. The bad news was, I faced the prospect of spending a further 48 hours in this volatile city, before I was due to take off in the early hours on Monday morning.

As usually happens when this kind of travel-disruption occurs, the lack of information and a lack of crowd management has been the most frustrating and annoying thing.

Personally, I feel Turkish Airways, in particular, should have done a lot better. It was a difficult situation but to have almost no staff on hand to deal with the huge numbers of worried people, some families with small children, elderly people, foreigners like me, etc.

They left junior and inexperienced staff to take the brunt of people’s anger and their management should feel ashamed of themselves."